eggs on sunday

This soup is a revelation. It’s utterly simple — only 5 ingredients (6 if you count salt) — and it’s silky, creamy, and pristinely white. Oh, and delicious!

Cauliflower is one of those ultra-nutritious cruciferous vegetables, in the brassica family with broccoli, kale and cabbage. One cup of it has most of your daily allowance of vitamin C, but it also has significant levels of folate, fiber, B vitamins, and omega-3 fatty acids. When pureed, it’s super smooth, silky and creamy - no need for any cream! (more…)

I’ve been feeling like a lighter, brothier soup lately — but one that’s still chock full of colorful vegetables, and maybe some beans. This is my version of minestrone: garlicky broth, diced tomatoes, emerald-green spinach, ribbons of cabbage, bright orange carrots, creamy white beans and cute little ditalini pasta. It’s fantastic with some grated Parmesan cheese on top, and a nice chunk of crusty bread alongside doesn’t hurt, either (I think I say that about a lot of things!)

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Minestrone Soup

Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped (about 2 ribs)
1 cup carrots, chopped (about 2 carrots)
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes with their juice (I like Muir Glen Organic)
2 cans white beans, such as cannellini, great northern, or navy - drained and rinsed
8 cups water, vegetable stock or chicken stock
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
3 thyme sprigs
1 bay leaf
2-inch piece Parmigiano-Reggiano rind (optional)
1/2 head small green cabbage, thinly sliced
1 cup ditalini pasta (or other small chunky pasta)
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
10 oz baby spinach
2 tsp red wine vinegar

Directions
Heat the olive oil over medium high heat in a large, heavy stockpot. Add the chopped onion, carrot, celery and garlic and saute until the onion softens, about 5-7 minutes. Add the can of diced tomatoes (with the juice), the drained and rinsed white beans, 8 cups water (or stock), 2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp ground black pepper, thyme sprigs, bay leaf, sliced cabbage, and cheese rind (if you’re using it.) Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.

Stir in the ditalini pasta and chopped parsley, and cook until the ditalini is done - about another 10 minutes. Stir the spinach into the soup until it’s wilted and bright green. Finally, add the red wine vinegar and stir to combine.

Taste and adjust the salt and pepper if needed. Serve with grated cheese on top.

Makes about 8-10 servings.

Wow. All I have to say is, it’s been far too long since I’ve had something curried…I had forgotten how much I love it. In the kitchen at our previous place, we had no vent hood over the stove — so curries sadly fell out of the rotation (there was something about smelling it for a week afterwards that wasn’t too appealing.) Thankfully, our current kitchen has a well-functioning hood, so curries are back!

I love lentils, but I’m not particularly crazy about traditional lentil soup — it might have less to do with how the lentils taste and more to do with the dull brown color that the run-of-the-mill common brown spanish lentils have when cooked. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about lentils lately, for some reason. Sadly, our current grocery store doesn’t stock many varieties of lentils, like I used to be able to get when I shopped at Whole Foods back in Boston. So, I just ordered a whole bunch of different ones from chefshop.com — the gorgeous tiny green-and-black-speckled French lentils (Le Puy), red lentils, harvest gold yellow lentils, and some tiny black beluga lentils.  It’s a bit embarrassing how excited I get when I think about all these lentil varieties waiting for me in my pantry.

Seeing as I already had lentils on the brain, when someone was telling me this past week about a great curried lentil soup they’d had, it was all I could think about. So, for this weekend’s soup recipe, it had to be my version of curried lentil soup! (more…)

It’s a feast of color for the eyes, and a feast of flavor for the tastebuds!

For this weekend’s soup recipe, we travel to Southeast Asia for inspiration, where peanuts are often used in sauces and condiments. In this soup, the nuttiness of the peanuts plays in the background, while the spicy chiles, carrots, and garlic take front row seats. You can make this soup with ingredients most of us usually have on hand in the pantry — carrots (a full 2 lb bag — think of all the Vitamin A and C you’re getting!), onions, garlic, celery, soy sauce, peanuts or peanut butter, juice of a lime, and crushed red pepper. If you have an immersion blender, you can make quick work of blending the soup with it (my immersion blender has a firm spot in my list of top 5 useful pieces of kitchen equipment*); otherwise, just blend it in batches in a blender or food processor. I like to garnish it with some chopped cilantro, a lime wedge or two, and a sprinkling of chopped peanuts. It was cold here today, and this spicy soup really warmed our bellies!

The original recipe is from the Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special, a cookbook full of recipes for soups, stews, salads, and other related goodies. It calls for Asian chili garlic sauce, which I had at one point, but when cleaning out my fridge the other week, I found the bottle of it at the back and realized I couldn’t remember (a) when I had purchased it, or (b) when I had last used it. Neither boded well for how long that bottle had been in there…so sadly, it got the boot. Since I don’t buy chili garlic sauce on a regular basis, the recipe below is made without it, but rather uses a combination of crushed red pepper flakes and minced garlic cloves. If you had a fresh chile hanging around, that would be terrific to use in lieu of the crushed red pepper flakes.

Incidentally, this recipe is also my entry into the No Croutons Required food blogging event, started this month by Lisa’s Kitchen and Tinned Tomatoes. Each month, they’re inviting bloggers from around the world to submit a recipe for a vegetarian soup or salad, and this month’s theme is simply vegetarian soups. They’ll be posting a roundup of all the submissions later on this month, and you can vote for your favorite vegetarian soup in the comments section. Should be fun, and I can’t wait to see what other vegetarian soups are submitted — I’m always looking for new ideas!

So without further ado, here’s the recipe. Savor those spoonfuls of spicy carrot peanut soup, and stay warm!

*Rounding out my list of top 5 pieces of kitchen equipment - besides immersion blender - are my enameled cast iron dutch oven, my heavy-duty aluminum half-sheet pans, my chef’s knife, and my myriad silicone spatulas. Though, now that I’m thinking about this, I might have to make it top 6 - I don’t know what I’d do without my Kitchen Aid mixer!

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Spicy Carrot Peanut Soup

Adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special

Ingredients
1 tbsp canola oil
2 onions, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 lb organic carrots, sliced fairly thinly (don’t go crazy, but you don’t want thick chunks, either. Shoot for 1/4-1/2 inch slices.)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4-1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, depending on how spicy you like it (or use a fresh chile, stemmed and chopped)
1 tsp coarse salt
6 cups water
2 tbsp all-natural peanut butter
3 tbsp soy sauce
juice of half a lime

For garnish: chopped cilantro, crushed peanuts, lime wedges

Directions
Heat the oil in a large heavy pot over medium high heat, then add the onions, celery, carrots, garlic, salt, crushed red pepper flakes and saute until the onion softens, about 5 minutes. Add the water and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the carrots are soft, about 25-30 minutes.

Add the peanut butter, soy sauce, and lime juice, and stir until the peanut butter melts into the soup. Puree the soup until smooth, using either an immersion blender or a food processor/blender (if using the latter, you’ll need to puree in batches.) Taste the soup and adjust the salt, if needed (though I usually find the 1 tsp originally added is enough.)

Serve garnished with chopped cilantro, crushed peanuts, and/or lime wedges.

Serves 6-8.

I usually make soup for us every weekend, and this weekend’s recipe came from the new issue of Cook’s Illustrated magazine — a velvety smooth, deep reddish-orange creamy tomato soup.

I really love tomato soup in general, and cream of tomato soups more, but I hadn’t thought of making it lately since we’re out of tomato season. One solution is just to buy a can of tomato soup at the store, but trust me — even though this is a bit more work, it is well worth the effort (of course, that holds true for any homemade soup!)

Something I love about Cook’s Illustrated magazine is that they don’t just give you the recipe; they give you an in-depth description of how they arrived at that recipe — every variation on ingredients they tried, all the different methods they experimented with, etc. It’s interesting to see the “why” behind a recipe; it gives you a better understanding of how ingredients work together and how a particular method yields a certain kind of results. I love these kinds of details when it comes to food!

So for this soup, since tomatoes are out of season right now, you use canned whole tomatoes (I like Muir Glen organic tomatoes), which you roast — the sugar in their skins caramelizes during roasting, which gives you those good, robust, deep flavors. The solids are pureed separately from the tomato broth. This is slightly more work than my usual preferred method of blitzing the entire contents of the soup pot with my handy dandy immersion blender, but the rationale behind it was to eliminate the extra aeration you’d get from pureeing solids and liquids together (which, according to the magazine article, resulted in a “circus orange” color. Not that appealing). The resulting soup is a deep red-orange, silkily smooth, and finished with some cream and a glug of sherry or brandy. I served it with some slices of crusty bread, spread generously with herb-infused olive oil and toasted.

The recipe makes enough for 4 generous/5 average servings, so double it if you want to have more to save for later (and you will want to have more for later!)

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Ultimate Cream of Tomato Soup

Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated, Winter 2008

Ingredients (for 4-5 servings)

For the Soup:
2 28-oz cans whole tomatoes, packed in juice (preferably organic)
1 1/2 tbsp dark brown sugar
4 tbsp unsalted butter
2/3 cup minced shallots
1 tbsp tomato paste
pinch ground allspice
2 tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cup low-sodium chicken broth (or homemade stock if you have it)
1/2 cup heavy cream, plus a tiny bit more for garnish
2 tbsp brandy or sherry

coarse salt and pepper

For the Herb Toasts (4 servings)
4-8 slices of crusty bread, such as baguette or ciabatta (4 if slices are large, 8 if doing smaller slices)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 tbsp chopped mixed fresh herbs - anything you like or have on hand; parsley, thyme, oregano, chives, basil, etc.
pinch of crushed red pepper
1-2 garlic cloves, minced or crushed

coarse salt and pepper

Directions

To make the soup:

Preheat the oven to 450 and line a rimmed baking sheet with foil.

Open the cans of whole tomatoes and drain them in a colander, catching the juice in a large bowl — set the bowl with the juice aside. Using your hands, squeeze the tomatoes gently to remove any excess juice and seeds (which you should discard) and place the seeded tomatoes in another bowl. Reserve 3 cups of the tomato juice you caught when draining the tomatoes and set aside.

Place the seeded tomatoes in a single layer on the baking sheet and sprinkle them evenly with the brown sugar. Roast for about 30 minutes, until they’re starting to color.

Meanwhile, heat the butter over medium heat in a medium saucepan until it starts to foam, then add the shallot, tomato paste, and allspice. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the shallot softens, about 7 minutes. Add the flour and stir until it’s blended in, then gradually whisk in the chicken stock/broth. Next, add the reserved 3 cups tomato juice and the roasted tomatoes. Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and let this mixture simmer about 10 minutes to blend the flavors.

Strain the soup into a medium bowl and wipe out the saucepan. Add the tomatoes and solids from the strainer into a food processor or blender, add 1 cup of the strained liquid, and blitz until smooth. Place the pureed mixture back into the saucepan, along with the strained liquid, and stir to combine together. Add the cream and heat over low heat until hot, then turn off the heat and stir in the brandy or sherry. Taste and season with coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper, as needed. Garnish with a little drizzle of heavy cream (see picture.)

To make the herb toasts:

Preheat oven to 450 (if you’ve just roasted the tomatoes, just leave the oven on and make the toasts before serving the soup).

Heat 1/4 cup olive oil in a small saucepan over low heat until warm, then add the freshly chopped herbs, minced garlic, and crushed red pepper. Turn off the heat and let this mixture steep for about 10-15 minutes.

Spread the slices of bread in one layer on a baking sheet. Brush generously with the olive oil mixture, making sure to get the fresh herbs onto the bread. Sprinkle each slice of bread with coarse salt and pepper, and place into the oven to crisp up a little — this usually takes about 10 minutes for me, but keep your eye on them and cook them until they’re toasted as much as you like.

Serve alongside a bowl of the soup.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve made this soup twice already - it’s that good! The soup by itself is very plain and basic, but it’s elevated tremendously by the addition of some herbs and garlic that are sauteed with olive oil and diced tomatoes. Served with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar in each bowl, the layered flavors in the soup are really wonderful. From the cookbook “Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen” by Deborah Madison.

Ingredients

2 cups white beans (cannellini or navy), soaked (see note below)

3 tbsp olive oil
1 celery rib, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, smashed
bouquet garni: 1 celery rib tied with 5 parsley stems and 1 thyme sprig
chunk of a rind of parmesan cheese (optional) 1 1/2 tsp salt

For garnish:
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 tbsp chopped parsley
3 tbsp chopped fresh sage
1 can organic diced tomatoes, drained (or 1 cup seeded fresh tomatoes, if in season)
balsamic vinegar (for serving)

Directions

To soak the beans: there are two ways to do this. The first would be to place 2 cups of rinsed, picked over dried beans in a pot and cover with plenty of cold water; leave to soak for 6-8 hours or overnight. The method I usually use is to place 2 cups of dried beans in a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil and cook for about 2 minutes, then turn off the heat and let soak in that water for another 1-2 hours. You should get a yield of about 6 cups of beans.

Heat the olive oil in a heavy large pot over medium heat. Add the carrots, onion and celery and cook for about 5 minutes, until the onion has softened. Add the drained soaked beans, 10 cups of water, the smashed garlic cloves, the bouquet garni, and a chunk of the rind from a parmesan cheese rind, if you’re using. Bring to a boil and then turn down the heat to medium-low, and let simmer for about 1 hour.

Add 1 1/2 tsp salt, and continue to cook the soup for another hour. At this point, I usually like to blend the soup with an immersion blender until it’s pretty smooth; you could also remove a portion of the soup and do the same blending in a blender or food processor. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

To make the garnish: in a small saucepan, heat the olive oil until it’s very hot and shimmering. Add, all at once, the drained diced tomatoes, garlic, parsley, and sage. Stir for about 30 seconds, until the tomatoes are heated and the herbs are bright green.

Serve the soup with a good spoonful of the tomato/herb mixture in each bowl, and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.

Makes about 8 generous servings.

This is a delicious (and nutritious!) soup, adapted from Moosewood Simple Suppers. I’ve added some garlic and a diced red bell pepper to the recipe, and use a bit more liquid than the original recipe had…you can adjust the amount of liquid to your liking. I prefer chard in this soup to kale, as I feel it doesn’t get quite so bitter; you can use any dark leafy green you like.

Ingredients

1 cup chopped onions
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground fennel
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes or 1/4 tsp cayenne
1 bunch stemmed, rinsed and chopped swiss chard, kale, or collards
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
1 15-oz can black beans
1 cup frozen corn kernels
2 cups water
1/4 cup chopped cilantro (optional)

Directions

Saute the onions and garlic over medium heat in a heavy large pot until softened, about 5-7 minutes. Add the cumin, fennel, red pepper/cayenne, and greens; stir to mix. Sprinkle with salt and continue to cook until the greens are wilted but still bright green. Add the can of diced tomatoes (with the juice), black beans, corn, and water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for about 10 minutes. Adjust the liquid if necessary, add some coarse salt to taste (it will need it), and stir in the chopped cilantro, if using.

You could serve this topped with crumbled tortilla chips and/or cheddar or jack cheese. Yum.

Serves 4.

I made this soup one chilly day in Ithaca, when it was wet with sleet and flurries — in other words, a perfect day to make some soup. We had a bunch of leeks in the fridge and some red potatoes to use, along with some tarragon that was sitting in the fridge waiting to be put to some use. I was looking over some different recipes, and ultimately decided to kind of combine a few different ideas into the resulting recipe: this one is partially blended, but I still like to have a little texture in it. It’s finished with some heavy cream and sour cream, for a little tang. I think the tarragon is a really nice flavor with the cream, leeks and potatoes - it’s got a hint of licorice in the flavor profile, but it’s more complex than that (good thing, that: licorice is one of the few foods I really don’t like.)

You can see cooking progress in these pictures (note the use of my most favorite cooking item: my new Le Creuset 7 quart Dutch Oven. Can’t beat it for heat retention, nice browning, and beautiful look.) I started out by sauteing the leeks, a few small onions, and a little garlic in some butter until the leeks began to turn golden brown. I then added some homemade poultry stock (lucky me still had some frozen from the big pot of stock I made with our turkey carcass after Thanksgiving) and the potatoes, and simmered until the potatoes were tender. You could stop here if you wanted - just season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve. But, I decided to make it a creamy potato-leek soup, so…using my immersion blender (one of the best cooking gadgets to own, in my opinion), I pureed about half the soup right in the pot to give it a bit more creaminess. It’s finished with a good glug of heavy cream, a good dollop of sour cream, and of course, salt and pepper to taste. Warm, creamy comforting soup for a cold, wet day.

Ingredients

6 tablespoons butter
4 large leeks (white and pale green parts only), sliced (about 2 cups)
2 small onions, chopped
8 garlic cloves, sliced
4 tablespoons water
1 pound red-skinned potatoes, unpeeled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
8 cups low-salt chicken broth or vegetable broth
2 teaspoons chopped fresh tarragon
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sour cream
salt and pepper, to taste (I used about 1 tsp salt)

Directions

Melt butter in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add leeks, onion, garlic, and 2 tablespoons water. Cook until leeks are just golden, about 10 minutes. Add potatoes and broth; bring to boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 10 minutes. Using an immersion blender or a regular blender/food processor, puree about half the soup — you will have a creamy broth with pieces of potato and leek remaining, for texture. Stir in tarragon.

Stir in heavy cream and sour cream. Season soup to taste with salt and pepper.

Makes about 8 servings.

A great soup for a cold winter’s day, from the cookbook Is It Soup Yet?, by Dot Vartan.

Ingredients

2 tbsp butter
1 cup chopped onions
1/4 cup flour
4 cups lowfat milk (skim also works)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp dry mustard
1/4 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce (you can use soy sauce in a pinch — I have to no ill effect)
1/2 tsp ground pepper
3 cups broccoli florets
1 lb grated sharp cheddar cheese

Directions

Melt butter in a stock pot. Add the onion and saute for 5 minutes. Stir in the flour and then half of the milk. Mix well. Add the rest of the milk, salt, mustard, basil, worcestershire sauce, and pepper. Mix well. Add the broccoli florets. Over medium heat, bring the milk close to the boiling point. Cook for 20 minutes, stirring often. Be careful not to scald the milk. Add the cheddar and stir until it is melted, about 5 minutes.

Adapted from Bon Appetit, February 2008.

A deliciously simple and savory butternut squash soup. I adapted the recipe a bit to use thyme in addition to the parsley and sage, and to stir in a little heavy cream at the end for that nice velvety mouth-feel.

Ingredients

1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups chopped onions
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage
4 cups 1/2-inch cubes peeled seeded butternut squash
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
1 garlic clove, minced
5 cups homemade chicken stock or purchased organic chicken broth
1/4 cup heavy cream

Directions

Heat the butter and olive oil over medium-high heat until hot. Add the onions, parsley, thyme and sage, and saute until the onion softens a bit, about 5 minutes. Add the butternut squash and salt, and stir until the squash has softened, about 5-6 minutes. Stir in the garlic, saute for about 1 minute, then add the 5 cups chicken stock. Bring to a boil and then turn down the heat and simmer until the squash is very soft, about 20-25 minutes. Turn off the heat, let cool slighly, and puree the soup using either an immersion (stick) blender or a blender. After the soup has been pureed, stir in 1/4 cup heavy cream, test for seasoning, and serve.

Serves 4.